“Students do a whole lot of things to prepare for their exams, some of which are good uses of their time and some of which are not,” explains professor John Dunlosky, professor in the department of psychological sciences at Kent State University.

How can metacognition help your pupils to perform better in exams? In this episode of the Tes English teaching podcast, Jamie Thom speaks to Alex Quigley, co-author of the EEF’s recent report on metacognition and self-regulation, to find out.

Mental health among teenagers is out of control, there is an epidemic of issues, and things are so much worse than they used to be - that is the message that has been perpetuated in the media and that has largely been bought into in schools. But the data simply does not support that narrative, according to Tamsin Ford, professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Exeter.

Professor Ford was one of the principal researchers for the largest study of mental health in 2-19 year olds in the UK, which was published last year and funded by the NHS. It was a follow up to two previous studies, one in 1999 and one 2004.

“The question we were answering was how many young people in England have a serious impairing mental health condition. This was clinically relevant problems, not mild conditions,” she explains on this week’s Tes Podagogy podcast (see audio player below to listen).

“If we look at the 5-15 year old group, across the three studies we see a bit of an increase, but not much. It is a matter of a couple of per cent, and the increase is almost all explained by more teenagers having more emotional problems, so significant anxiety and depression.”

The figures for this group were as follows: 9.7 per cent in 1999 and 10.1 per cent in 2004 to 11.2 per cent in 2017.

In this podcast, Professor Ford delves deeper into the data (including some figures around very high levels of problems among 16-19 year old girls), discusses what schools can do to support mental health and explains how social media is not necessarily the driver of problems it is widely considered to be.

Welcome to episode one of Mathematips - the Tes Maths Podcast with teacher and researcher Lucy Rycroft-Smith

You may never have heard the name Professor Margaret Brown, but for several decades now she’s been working on researching aspects of maths education in the UK – not only trying to find out what the current picture is, but crucially how to help make it better.

Her work has focused on multiplicative reasoning, one of the significant keys to mathematical understanding at all ages. (You pronounce it multi-PLIC-ative reasoning, for the record. Margaret talks about pronouncing ‘matrix’ wrongly – like ‘mattress’ – for years until someone corrected her).

It is all about the deep understanding of multiplying and dividing, rather than just learning times tables or performing calculations, and starts with recognising when you actually need to use multiplication. It’s the basis for some very fundamental mathematical ideas, and can be a real sticking point for pupils who can’t then fully access other parts of the curriculum. It’s also, she says, "surprisingly under-researched".

Play is one of the most misunderstood topics in education, says developmental cognitive psychologist and early years specialist David Whitebread. In this week’s episode, he talks to Helen Amass to set the record straight.